百年孤独为什么值得看 世纪文学经典:《百年孤独》第20章Part6

世纪文学经典:《百年孤独》第20章Part6  

Aureliano did not understand until then how much he loved his friends
how much he missed them
and how much he would have given to be with them at that moment. He put the child in the basket that his mother had prepared for him
covered the face of the corpse with a blanket
and wandered aimlessly through the town
searching for an entrance that went back to the past. He knocked at the door of the pharmacy
where he had not visited lately
and he found a carpenter shop. The old woman who opened the door with a lamp in her hand took pity on his delirium and insisted that
no
there had never been a pharmacy there
nor had she ever known a woman with a thin neck and sleepy eyes named Mercedes. He wept
leaning his brow against the door of the wise Catalonian’s former bookstore
conscious that he was paying with his tardy sobs for a death that he had refused to weep for on time so as not to break the spell of love. He smashed his fists against the cement wall of The Golden Child
calling for Pilar Ternera
indifferent to the luminous orange disks that were crossing the sky and that so many times on holiday nights he had contemplated with childish fascination from the courtyard of the curlews. In the last open salon of the tumbledown red-light district an accordion group was playing the songs of Rafael Escalona
the bishop’s nephew
heir to the secrets of Francisco the Man. The bartender
who had a withered and somewhat crumpled arm because he had raised it against his mother
invited Aureliano to have a bottle of cane liquor
and Aureliano then bought him one. The bartender spoke to him about the misfortune of his arm. Aureliano spoke to him about the misfortune of his heart
withered and somewhat crumpled for having been raised against his sister. They ended up weeping together and Aureliano felt for a moment that the pain was over. But when he was alone again in the last dawn of Macondo
he opened up his arms in the middle of the square
ready to wake up the whole world
and he shouted with all his might:
“Friends are a bunch of bastards!?
Nigromanta rescued him from a pool of vomit and tears. She took him to her room
cleaned him up
made him drink a cup of broth. Thinking that it would console him
she took a piece of charcoal and erased the innumerable loves that he still owed her for
and she voluntarily brought up her own most solitary sadnesses so as not to leave him alone in his weeping. When he awoke
after a dull and brief sleep
Aureliano recovered the awareness of his headache. He opened his eyes and remembered the child.